Justice for Eddie Fullerton

Eddie Fullerton was a friend of mine. He was also a Sinn Féin councillor in Donegal, the husband of Diana and the father of their three daughters and three sons. Eddie Fullerton was older than me. He was born on 26 March 1935 to John and Mary Fullerton and he grew up on a small farm in the townland of Sledrin, just north of Buncrana, in Inis Eoghain. At the age of 18 Eddie went to find work in Scotland and from there to Birmingham, England.

That is where he met and married Diana. They returned to Ireland in 1975. Eddie set up the Gaughan/McDaid Sinn Féin Cumann in Buncrana. Until his death he was the largest seller of An Phoblacht in Ireland.

Eddie was elected to Buncrana Urban District Council and Donegal County Council in the local elections of 1979. There were not a lot of Sinn Féin councillers at that time. The war was raging in the north. Censorship and exclusion was the order of the day in the south.

In March 1984, I was shot and wounded, with others in a gun attack in Belfast. I went to Inis Eoghain to recuperate and Colette and I spent a few weeks there in a caravan. Eddie was among the local people who made sure we were not lacking in any home comforts.

Eddie was also a regular and popular speaker at Sinn Féin Ard Fheiseanna.

On 25 May 1991 Eddie Fullerton was killed. It was a Friday night. It had been a good day. The Minister for the Environment Padraig Flynn had visited Buncrana that day. Eddie, true to form, stood on a picket line outside the sewage works and afterwards he attended the event for the Minister in the local hotel. It was at this event that Eddie learned that his vision for a dam in the region – now a multimillion project in the Pollan Valley appropriately named "The Fullerton Pollan Dam" – had been approved.

Eddie returned home some time after midnight. Diana was waiting up for him.

There was no one else in the house. She made him a sandwich and a cup of tea and went up to bed, and Eddie followed soon afterwards. Shortly after 2 am they were wakened by the crashing sound of the front door being smashed in. Initially confused, Eddie quickly jumped out of bed and ran to the bedroom door to be confronted on the landing in the dark by his killers. There was a short scuffle, shots were fired, and then silence. Diana recalled afterwards that the silence was deafening. Outside the bedroom door Eddie's body was strewn across the landing, eyes closed and blood streaming from his head on the carpet. Diana ran barefoot out of the house to a neighbour's house, shocked and bewildered, looking for help. It was too late. Eddie was dead. His killing was claimed by the UFF, a cover name for the UDA.

Soon after the Garda Special Branch sealed off the house and the area around it. Eddie remained where he lay for 15 hours while his family were kept outside and denied access to him. They have alleged since this time that the Gardaí did not carry out a comprehensive examination of the scene, that they wrongly removed material, some of which has still to be accounted for, and that crucial forensic material was never examined.

Today, 14 years after his death, Eddie's wife and family are still asking for truth and justice.

•Why has there been no real investigation?

•Why were key witnesses not interviewed?

•Why were leads never followed up?

•Why did the Garda remove Eddie's files, instead of concentrating on obvious forensic evidence which was ignored?

•Why did a Garda officer suggest to Mrs Fullerton that it would be in her own best interest not to pursue a enquiry?

•Why have suggestions of collusion not been addressed?

There is growing evidence that, like virtually all attacks claimed or carried out by loyalist paramilitaries in this jurisdiction, the murder of Eddie Fullerton was carried out in collusion with British Intelligence, including the notorious FRU (Force Research Unit) whose activities were exposed by the Stevens Inquiry team.

The assassins entered and left the Fullerton home in the early hours of the morning with ease, obviously familiar with the area and made their getaway without hitch. They certainly had detailed local knowledge. In advance of the attack, they took over a Bed and Breakfast about a mile from Eddie's home. They then stole the family car and a sledgehammer before making their approach to Eddie's house. They pulled into the driveway of a house vacated only two weeks before. This allowed them to go through fields to the rear of Eddie's house which is at the end of a narrow cul de sac.

A key witness claims that he saw an unmarked RUC car pick up three men in military fatigues on the Derry-Donegal border 30 minutes after the shooting. It is claimed that the pick-up happened close to where the UDA team's car was abandoned. And in June 1991 a World in Action programme revealed that Eddie Fullerton's photograph and other details were contained in an RUC intelligence file found in the possession of the UDA/UFF.

In March 2002 I wrote to the Taoiseach and asked that the remit of the Morris Tribunal be extended to include the murder of Eddie Fullerton. I also spoke to him on this issue and he appeared to be open to that suggestion.

However when I received a formal reply from the Justice Department some months later, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, dismissed this suggestion saying that "it would not be appropriate to bring an entirely separate matter within the remit of the Inquiry". It is clear now, as it was back then, that some of the gardaí implicated in the first and second reports from the Morris Tribunal were among those who had failed to properly investigate Eddie's murder. And critically it has been asserted that it was elements within the Garda in Donegal who leaked information to the media falsely suggesting that Eddie Fullerton had passed information to the IRA resulting in the killing of a Castlederg UDR man, Ian Sproule, in 1990. Thus setting Eddie Fullerton up for assassination.

Events of recent weeks have put a renewed focus on all of this. Three of the gardaí discredited by the Morris Tribunal were involved in the investigation into the murder of Eddie Fullerton. One of these individuals, Det Garda Noel McMahon, was branded corrupt and a liar by the Morris tribunal.

The Tribunal has proved beyond any doubt the urgent need for a full independent, public inquiry that can uncover the truth, not only behind the Fullerton murder, but also examine the role the gardaí played in the flawed investigation that followed.

Diana and her son Albert were in Leinster House on Thursday, 16 June, to try and secure cross party support for a full public inquiry into Eddie's murder. This visit took place just one day ahead of the first Dáil debate on the findings of the Morris Tribunal. Questions which the Fullerton family have been raising for years – and which are only now receiving some attention and which were largely ignored by the establishment – have been given a new credibility because of the Morris Tribunal.

A fortnight ago Donegal County Council unanimously called for a full public independent inquiry. Speaking after the council meeting, the proposer of the motion Councillor Pádraig MacLochlainn said, "Serious questions remain to be answered in relation to both the original investigation by the Gardaí into the killing of Eddie Fullerton and the involvement of British agents in the killing. It is significant and relevant that three of the Gardaí discredited by the Morris Tribunal were also heavily involved in the original fundamentally flawed investigation into the killing of Eddie Fullerton. It is unacceptable that two of these Gardaí have been allowed to retire from the force with full pensions and have never been brought to book for their actions or inactions. It is regrettable that the Morris Tribunal remit was never widened to include the Fullerton investigation".

The Fullertons deserve justice.